UNIT UK 20
by ComsatAngel
Summary: Captains Walmsley and Komorowski gets involved in the offduty shenanigans of Nick Munroe and his sister, Elizabeth. A lot of drinking, a little fracas, sadly no romance!


UNIT UK 20

'I'm terribly sorry, Miss Smith,' I said, sighting along the barrel of the pistol. 'But I don't have any choice about this.'

Sarah Jane smiled bravely.

'It's okay, John, I don't blame you.'

Brave words, after all the trouble caused by her. I cocked the pistol. Sarah shut her eyes.

One rather small bang later, she opened them again.

'It's not very loud, is it?'

No it wasn't. I sighted along the barrel again and put another round into the target.

'It's a Beretta, Sarah. Nice and small. A real lady's gun. No loud noises.'

I didn't mention that the ammunition was Nick Munroe's patent hollow-point, made from a silver alloy, and despite it's low noise signature, would make a fist-sized hole in whomever it hit.

Popping the magazine out, and racking the slide to ensure no rounds remained, I passed it to Sarah.

'One and a half pounds. Have a heft of it.'

Sportingly, she did so, even going so far as to twirl it around her finger.

'Do I really have to carry it?' she asked. 'I mean, I'm a journalist, not some _femme fatale_ from James Bond.'

My expression nearly made her laugh.

'Besides, the Doctor won't be happy about it.'

That was a moot point. The Doctor was currently _hors de combat_ in the sick bay, recuperating from injuries that would have killed or crippled a human being.

'Sarah,' I said, heavy on the gravitas. 'Do you know where CSM Benton and myself were on Monday?'

In front of Field Marshall Steenbergen, UNIT's C-in-C, in Geneva. We'd spent a good twenty minutes in front of the diminutive Swede, explaining why I'd beaten a man's face in with a spade, and killed another with ammunition banned under the Geneva Convention, and why Benton had broken another man's jaw in seventeen places by using brass knuckledusters. The Field Marshall listened, and asked questions in accented English, and made notes and finally dismissed us with a formal warning. Less formally he commiserated us on being caught out and try not to get caught next time eh lads?

'My point is, you caused a bloody great commotion by being kidnapped. So the Brig leaned on me to provide you with personal protection, because the Home Secretary had leaned on him, and because the Prime Minister leaned on him.'

Sarah looked at the brightly-oiled litte pistol.

'John, I barely know one end of this gun from another. Point in direction A, pull trigger B, bullet emerges from muzzle C.'

'That's all you need to know!' I beamed. 'Sergeant Whittaker will give you training on the firing range. And then I can tell the Brig that you are fully-trained in armed self-defence. He can then tell the Home Secretary, who can tell the Prime Minsiter, who can tell Geneva. All concerned go home happy.'

Poor lass, she still hesitated. Time to wheel on the big reassurance.

'For what it's worth, Sarah, I doubt whether you'll ever need to fire that pistol except to start egg-and-spoon races. I have contacts in the London underworld - ' actually only one contact, who was no longer in the underworld, because he was so successful, and not a man to cross lightly ' - who say that UNIT is now very, very hands-off. Anyone who suggests taking on UNIT, or abducting their personnel, or attacking them, will disappear.'

'Really?' asked Sarah, her journalistic antennae twitching. You could almost visualise her reaching for a notepad and pen.

'Really. Greek Charlie, after all, is dead. Most of his gang are dead, that or doing twenty five to life. Reason enough for UNIT to be out of bounds.'

Not all that day's news was joy unabated. Sergeant Whittaker came into the building later on with an expression of unrelieved gloom on his face.

'You can classify Miss Smith's marksmanship under the heading "Bloody Useless", sir,' he told me. 'Jo Grant could hit the gold five times out of ten. Miss Smith can barely manage to hit the entire target one time in fifteen.'

The target in this case is a circular one five feet across. The "gold" is what laypeople call the bulls-eye.

'Never mind, Sarn't,' I commiserated. 'You did your best. And one in fifteen is pretty good for a girly journalist with weak wrists.'

Normally the Sergeant and I would have worked on Sarah's dismal marskmanship over a few days, but I had leave coming up, so I move forward to when Nick Munroe and I got leave simultaneously. This might have been awkward normally since I was a Captain and Nick was a simple Lieutenant, and Captains and Lieutenants don't usually mix well, especially when the simple Lieutenant is Munroe, who is by definition pretty simple. Except for the "pretty" part.

He had invited yours truly and my Polish shadow, Kapitan Komorowski, to his bijou pad in fashionable Knightsbridge. Two floors, master bedroom, guest bedroom, box room, two bathrooms, dining room, all it lacked was Jeeves or Hercule Poirot. Did I mention the kitchen, games room, lounge with grand piano and scullery? Essentially it was a house on the sixth floor of an apartment block in the high-rent area. One of his neighbours was a petro-chemical specialist frequently out in the Middle East on business, and another was an architect based in New York.

One particularly unusual piece of furniture was Nick's younger sister, Elizabeth, who had come down to London to have a look at various medical schools. Bright as a button, with a clutch of A levels at "A" grade, and with attitude, she looked set to study medicine. Her father, the formidable Colonel Munroe (Black Watch) Ret'd, also deemed it a good idea for her to get a dismal dead-end job for a year, to build up her funds for university and to understand what a crap job entailed. Leggy, coltish, freckled, red-haired and tall and slim, Elizabeth turned many a head in London. Not mine. I am armoured in _amour propre_, as defined by myself, my girlfriend and other parties.

So. I led Komorowski up the stairs, after being let in by Nick over the intercom system.

'Don't mention money,' I warned my companion. 'It's very bad form to mention money in front of people who have lots of it.'

'Money,' he repeated. 'Mention not.'

'Also, don't criticise the Black Watch. If you do, Nick may have to kill you in a duel. Only joking! Well, half-joking. A quarter-joking. Joking.'

'Don't criticise "Black Watch",' repeated Komorowski, frowning. I carried on before he could start asking what Black Watch was, because the British Army's traditions and customs are baffling even to those of us who serve in it.

'And lastly, please please please, don't say that I _ever_ mentioned Nick in a positive way in front of his sister.'

'Nick is a dastard,' muttered Komorowski. 'Got it.'

'NICK!' shrieked a female voice the instant Komorowski and I entered the foyer. 'They're here! Mister Fit and Mister Git!'

Komorowski and I exchanged looks. Who was who? We dropped our bags and went into the hallway that led into the first floor rooms.

A small hurricane grabbed me around the neck from the right-hand side, swung around me over the rear and landed with a resounding thump on my left.

'Wow! You must be the Polish hardcase!' said a female Scottish voice, poking me in the ribs under my scars on the left lung. 'Big and nasty!'

'Bolshoi nye khorosho,' echoed Komorowski, deadpan, looking at me.

Nick, in shirtsleeves, arrived in time to prevent more serious embarassment.

'Well, you know, decades of propaganda and all that,' explained a mini-skirted Elizabeth afterwards, over a brandy. 'I never took you to be the famous John Walmsley.'

We were in the living room, a huge open-spaced area with vistas of London that a film director would have killed for. Logs, real wooden split-pine logs, burned in the fireplace.

'Famous?' I replied, darting a glance at Nick, who suddenly seemed interested in the roof fixtures of his penthouse pad. Komorowski diplomatically nursed his glass of scotch in silence. He never smiled, the deadpan Polish swine, but I could tell he was amused, oh yes.

'Yes, famous. Didn't Tark tell you that Pater wants to meet you? Oh, naughty Nick! That counts as cowardice-in-the-face-of, you know.'

"Tark" refers to Nick's detested first name: Tarquin. Very few people know of this, and those of us who do have incredible blackmail potential.

'He does?' queried Nick, plainly surprised.

'Oh certainly!' chirped Elizabeth, casually throwing herself into a leather seat and exposing large amounts of thigh. I looked at the ceiling and Komorowski's expressive eyebrows looked at Nick.

'Liz, don't flash your knickers at the menfolk,' scolded Nick. 'And Dad wants to – to see Captain Walmsley? Did he say why?'

With entirely ingenuous sincerity, Liz tucked her long legs beneath her and sipped from a martini.

' "A man of ruthlessness, integrity and intelligent application". That's what he said. Besides, O elder brother, I think this Walmsley chap has pulled your fat out of the fire often enough for pater to wonder about him.'

That wasn't true, quite the opposite in fact.

'Ah. Elizabeth, it's a sad fact that I wouldn't be here if Nick and his assortment of automatic firepower hadn't shown up at Leek – ah, at the quarry - I and eight other men would be dead. There were about two minutes in it.'

'Don't forget that hunting pack of Deinosuchus,' added Nick.

'Oh, yes, the vanishing dinosaurs!' added Liz. 'We heard all about them. Are there - '

'No! No there are not. No remains at all. Traces yes, remains no,' I interrupted. 'If you really want to know about dinosaurs I can put you onto an expert.'

'Doctor Ruth Kelly,' added Nick, entirely unasked and unwanted. 'Who had a big fat crush on John. I've got her address on file if you want to see her.'

Elizabeth promptly started to pay close attention.

'Oh yes, I think I'd like that. Paleontology, you know, always been an interest of mine.'

'Not only that,' continued Nick. 'Our crusading Captain here has been to beyond the far distant Oxus. Well not quite as far in reality. Beyond the River – sorry, Kapitan, what is it?'

'Bug,' replied Komorowski, pronouncing it "Book". Which is the authentic and proper pronunciation.

Elizabeth's eyes got big as saucers. Damn her brother and his enormous flapping tongue!

'Ooh! Into Russia! Is that why your friend is here?'

I coughed a good two or three pounds-worth of cognac into the atmosphere.

'Miss Munroe! The Kapitan is from _Poland_, not Russia. Poland.'

She looked between me and the Pole in sincere surprise.

'Oh. I beg your pardon, Captain - '

' "Kapitan",' I corrected.

'Kapitan. Oh dear. John, that's like calling Nick "English", isn't it? Oh, what a _faux pas_! Please, forgive me, Kapitan.'

I have to give it to Komorowski, he was up out of his seat like a flash of lightning, bowing over Elizabeth and kissing the back of her hand before anyone else could move.

'A lady as beautiful as yourself can be forgiven many things, Miss Munroe,' he smarmed, managing to click his heels together. 'As I forgive you this day any mistakes you may make.'

Which had an uncanny echo of the Lord's Prayer for an atheistic officer from an atheistic country with an atheistic political regime.

Nick's face was a picture in contrasts: surprise, amusement, alarm, awed acknowledgement of a superior artist at work.

'The Kapitan is married, Lieutenant Munroe,' I explained. 'But I still don't intend to introduce him to my girlfriend.'

Komorowski broke into a grin at that point. He stood and saluted both Nick and I with his brandy glass.

'Pan Britanskoi! Friends, you may call me Tadeusz.'

yes, well, that might be as well as, but how the hell do you pronounce a name with two syllables that sounds like six?

' for I am your Polski comrade. Sto lat!'

By mutual agreement Kapitan Komorowski was known as "Tad" after that.

Several hours and many brandies, martinis, whiskys, vodkas and ports later, we the officers of UNIT sat or lay in our seats and contemplated the evening. And Nick's hi-fi system. Elizabeth was long gone to bed.

'What is this hideous caterwauling cacophony?' I blustered, gradually recognising that there was an hideous caterwauling – oh you get the idea.

'Philistine!' replied Nick. 'This is Pink Floyd. "The Dark Side of the Moon", I'll have you know.'

I turned to Tad.

'Nick's musical taste is all arranged by colour, you know. Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and – er – Deep Purple.'

I was only half-joking, but Nick took the bait instantly.

'Ha! Tone-deaf poltroon! Dark Side of the Moon sums up the contemporary alienation and angst of twentieth-century man.'

'You're not convincing me.'

'I like jazz,' mentioned Tad.

'Oh, righto – I'll get Weather Report.'

A little befuddled by all the alcohol, I looked out at the evening sky.

'Clear and cold. Frost likely.'

'Not "the weather report",' scolded Nick. ' "Weather Report".'

'Joe Zawinul and Jaco Pastorius,' agreed Tad. I looked between them.

'Sounds like aliens the Doctor might have encountered. You're not making this up? No. Well, this tired old Captain is off to bed.'

Tad had refused to be put up for the night, saying he could get quarters at the Polish Embassy; when I declared my intent to go to bed, he also took his leave. Literally, since he had a four-day pass back home to Warsaw on the first Lot flight out in the morning. Nick then revealed what I suspected: his girlfriend, Moyra McTaggart, was coming to visit.

I say "girl", but Moyra was actually something else entirely: a para-human, one of a small group who dwelt at Rockcliffe in the west of Scotland. Calling themselves The People, they were semi-aquatic beings who periodically inter-bred with humans because of their own sterility problems. What made them stand out from the crowd were their stunning good looks. I knew all about them, but Nick – supposedly – didn't.

'Nick,' I began, after a bit of harumphing. 'This is a bit delicate and I'm not entirely sure how to put it, but Moyra - '

'I know all about The People,' huffed Nick. 'You can hardly be intimate with one and _not_ know, can you?'

'Oh! Oh. Oh, well, I don't need to say anything more, do I?'

He directed a beady glance at me.

'Don't mention Moyra's, ah, _background_, to Liz. I have a sneaky feeling they'll probably clash from the first moment they meet.'

At first my thoughts ran along "so what?" lines, until another suspicion surfaced.

'Here, you're not trying to palm me off as your sister's escort, are you?'

I realised this was exactly the wrong thing to say when Nick's face expressed radiant delight.

'John! Brilliant idea! No need to be the gooseberry, you can look after the gel. What serendipity!'

'Your master plan has a major flaw. Lack of agreement from the Walmsley party.'

'John, John, you'd be perfect! A big strapping lad like you will stop any London oiks from taking liberties with the gel. Not only that,' he added slyly, 'Moyra says that you're impervious to the wiles of other women. Altogether too fond of Marie to consider straying.'

Outmanouevred, I raised my hands in surrender.

'Go on, go on, you Napoleon of romantic planning. I don't doubt Elizabeth will protest at being given a bodyguard.'

She didn't. Elizabeth quite liked the idea of a hulking great escort who wouldn't paw her inappropriately, and informed Nick of this over breakfast. He daintily buttered his toast and cocked his little finger.

'Moyra is meeting me for lunch at the Trabazon, from where I will squire her to a film in Leicester Square, and afterwards a splendid meal devoid of your melancholy company. We will be back here for early evening.'

'Take her to see "Jaws",' I advised. 'Believe me, there's a bit in that where she will leap into your lap with fright.' Marie had done with me, anyway.

'Ooh, so Moyra will be staying tonight, hmm?' said Elizabeth to the toastrack. 'Poor John will either be in an hotel or on the sofa.'

Poor John sensibly kept his mouth closed.

'Why should my fellow-soldier and close comrade of a dozen desperate adventures sleep on the sofa, sis? I think that's more your sort of sordid student lifestyle.'

Elizabeth came back with several hot retorts, and a heated little Celtic spat without any genuine rancour took place. Nick finally departed to get smarted and tarted, whilst Elizabeth and I tidied and washed dishes.

'No short skirts today,' I warned her. 'It's chilly.'

Nick came back downstairs from the master bedroom, wearing a Black Watch tie, and an Italian suit so dapper even I knew it to be so. He threw a sock at Elizabeth.

'See you later!' he sang out and left. Elizabeth shook her head, went to throw the sock in the bin and paused, squeezing it.

When she emptied it, she found two hundred and fifty pounds inside, her brother's idea of a joke.

'What would your idea of a London tour be?' asked Elizabeth when we got to ground level, saluted the concierge and ventured onto London's frosty streets.

'A rapid jog around Hyde Park, find a pub, sink a few pints, have pie and chips, a jog round Regent's Park, another pub, then home for bed.'

I got a stern look for that. Accordingly, we followed Elizabeth's itinerary.

'I have a low pain threshold when it comes to shopping,' I warned her.

'Pooh! Shopping!' she said, snapping her fingers. We went on the Tube, which she found delightful and fascinating, over to St Paul's station, and thence to St Bartholomew's Hospital, where we trawled up and down floors and corridors until we discovered the Personnel Offices, all nasty pegboard-over-wood-panelling, smelling of cabbage and soap. Elizabeth got an application form for a Nursing Auxiliary.

'Elizabeth, pardon my ignorance, but I – and your father, too, I believe – thought you were going to medical school?' I asked when we eventually left. 'Like that one opposite – Bart's Medical College?'

'Can't you call me "Liz"? Only the Old Man call's me Elizabeth, and only then when I'm in his bad books.'

We travelled to Russell Square Station, where Liz took my arm in hers and dragging me along when I looked disposed to loiter.

'Here we are, Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital,' announced Liz. 'And – oh, are you all right, John?'

No I was not. I politely declined going into the hospital, and Liz didn't push the point. She came out safely enough ten minutes later, clutching another application form, for a Kitchen Porter.

We walked along to Russell Square Gardens and took a seat, shooing pigeons away first.

'My plan, John, is to get a job in a hospital for a year before I begin medical school, doing a nasty job. Earn my pennies, see the hospital as it really is, as approved by father.'

I looked approving as well.

'I did the same before going to university. Baltic Mill in Wigan. General labourer, that was me. Lowest form of life in the mill. Carry that bale, shift those bobbins, move that jig. It knocked some of the rough corners off me, I can tell you.'

'Character-forming!' laughed Liz, earning looks from passing males. 'I've already checked-out the medical schools - King's College, St Mary's, Charing Cross, Westminster, the Royal Free, and Bart's too. This is more of a getting-to-know the area day.'

The next two hospitals on Liz's agenda were University College and the Middlesex, close enough to walk to. By that time I was hungry, so we found a pub that didn't seem too grotty and had lunch.

'Allow me to pay for this,' I offered. 'You are the most uncurious woman I have ever encountered since joining UNIT. No questions about me, or what I do, or what I've done.'

'Oh, I don't need to ask you,' said Liz airily. 'Nick's already told me. Would you like a glass of water?' she added as I nearly choked on a chip. Visions of Nick being thrown into Long Lartin to do fourteen years solitary flitted across my mind.

'Don't be silly!' she scolded. 'Nothing important, or any juicy details. Nick is, at the least, discreet. For example, I know why you didn't want to go into Great Ormond Street.'

'Oh?' I commented, neutrally.

'Yes. Big brother says that one thing guaranteed to send you into a frothing rage is people abusing kids. Ergo, kid's suffering is not something you want to see.'

Busily, I stuffed chicken breast into my mouth. Nick had said that? It was true, and his sister was pretty quick on the uptake to work that out.

'I can see why you have a clutch of A levels.'

'Highers,' she corrected me. 'Highers, not A levels. Our Scottish education system is considerably more advanced than the Sassenach version. I have Language, Literature, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Religious Studies.'

'And you wheedle details about UNIT operations out of Nick?'

She finished off the last morsel on her plate.

'No, not me. The Old Man does that. It's a contest – Nick has to give information about what he's been doing, without giving away any secret information.'

Good God, I thought. Munroe Senior seemed a right old bugger, stiff as starch and bitter as almonds.

'You don't paint your Dad in a very flattering light.'

'Oh, he's not so bad,' she smirked. 'If you know how to handle him.'

I wiggled my little finger.

'And I bet you can twist him round both of these, hm?'

'Er, yes. I have gotten away with things that Nick or Don or Greg would have been chopped into dogfood for.' She still sounded smug.

'What if your fair brother refuses to give the information? He's not obliged to. In fact he's probably obliged to report your father to UNIT Geneva.'

Liz sniggered unpleasantly.

'Nick's allowance and income can't pay for his Knightsbridge penthouse, you know. That's why he's always up to high jinks with money. If his father cut off the allowance, why there'd be trouble!'

Nick's latest scam involved selling expended ammunition to gullible journalists as "being used against UNIT targets". He was quite right; they were spent rounds he'd picked up from the firing ranges at Aylesbury, described in such a way as to sound as if he'd fired them himself at Cybermen and Daleks.

Lunch over, we went to feed the ducks and geese in Hyde Park. I pointed out where various dinosaurs had been spotted, and even found what might still be footprints on the grass.

Liz mused on life. Not girly queries on where she might be heading in a few years, more what the Universe held for humanity.

'Intelligent alien life exists. If it didn't, UNIT wouldn't exist and you wouldn't be here. Some of that alien life is hostile, or UNIT wouldn't be armed. Some of it is friendly, like that being you have at your HQ. Nick's mentioned him a few times.'

She meant the Doctor. Normally he's called "the Doctor", rather than a "being".

'You make him sound like a ten foot monster with green skin and two heads.'

Liz bounced bread off a duck.

'He can't resemble that, or there'd be lots of stories in the press.'

Ha ha, Liz, you have no idea about Project Broom, the follow-up department of UNIT that controls lots of media concerning "exotic threats to the human commonwealth" as the charter so grandly puts it.

'He could walk down Oxford Street entirely un-noticed.'

Liz wanted more information.

'_No_ way! I have merely confirmed what you already know and have deduced. For all I know UNIT Geneva have asked you to pump me for restricted information, with a prosecution pending if I weaken.'

Liz edged a little closer, widening her eyes. I intercepted her intent before she could speak.

'Do not try your girlish wiles on me, Elizabeth. I love my girlfriend one hundred and ten per cent and you can't sway me with flirting.'

She tried to look upset and instead burst out laughing. Putting on a sulky look, I stared out over the pond in mock-annoyance.

'Thank you, thank you, that does my self-esteem no help at all. Some women _have_ tried to flirt with me, you know. Hard as it is to believe.'

Liz settled back against the bench, looking at me in an appraising manner.

'Yes. Yes, I think you would appeal to women who like a good hard man.' She realised the _double entendre_ in a second and laughed again. 'Sorry! You do give off an air of "Don't pee around with me or I'll rip your throat out with my bare teeth". Some women like a man with the expressiveness of granite.'

She looked me over again.

'Big muscles, too. Nick said you played the manly game of rugby.'

'Nick also says I am an over-developed bag of beef, young lady. I simply can't get the practice or games I used to, so at Marie's insistence – she being my serious girlfriend – I swim instead. One hundred lengths of the pool, sixy five seconds average per length.'

She opened her mouth to either ask more questions, refine her flirting or bait me, so I pre-empted her.

'Hush now, let me put a proposition to you. If you are in London in the near future, and the Doctor happens to be in the Kensington branch of UNIT, then I will warn you.'

'What good will that do?'

'You have perhaps a year to get vetted as a cleaner or window-washer at Kensington, and if you're in there and speak to the Doctor, he will actually deign to speak back. Especially, _most_ especially, if you can ask him some question about past historical events.'

I didn't mention the Doctor's fantastic time-travelling spaceship, TARDIS. Frankly, if you describe TARDIS, people start looking for restraining jackets that lace up the back.

After our lunch had settled, we rode the Tube for an hour, not going anywhere specific, just Liz being a tube tourist. I was like this when I first went to London on a college outing. An incident at Tottenham Court Road unsettled Liz; less so myself, being more of a London hand.

There's a big fruit stall on the platform at TCR, owned and run by an elderly black man, completely bald and with a wizened face, who is invariably cheerful and chirpy: he's there first thing in the morning and only packs up last thing in the evening. Liz fancied a banana, she said – a comedy opening I bit my lip to avoid exploiting. Two rather dishevelled-looking men in their thirties were giving the stall-owner mouthfuls of abuse. They smelt of wine and vomit, and looked to have spent the night sleeping in a drain. I elbowed one aside, not gently, and asked for a bunch of bananas.

I got the bananas, and more abuse from Mr Gutter Couture. That didn't bother me, I could take any amount of abuse and not bother.

'Get off!' shouted a livid Liz from behind me. I turned to see the second swearing sot pawing at her breasts, leering and laughing, not bothered about an enraged Liz slapping his face. He slapped her back, hard.

Oh dear. Oh dearie dear.

You couldn't have written a script that would have punched all my rage buttons so quickly _en masse_. I dropped the bag of bananas, turning back to the stall owner.

'Excuse me,' I said, grabbing a two-pound weight he used to keep the stall balanced. 'Excuse me,' I said, tapping the drunken letch on the shoulder. He turned round, vastly amused, to receive the weight, full on the flat underside, of the metal balance square in his face.

'Excuse me! Excuse me!' I hissed, hitting him twice. Blood flowed on the platform tiles. The first drunken arsehole shouted insults at me, pulling a flick-knife from his jacket pocket, so I gave him a ju dai in the stomach. He curled up on the platform tiles and retched. I picked him up by the nostril.

'Disappear. And take _that_ with you.' "that" being his bleeding, whinging friend. 'And, if I ever see you again, I will be the last thing you see. Ever.'

Once on the Tube again and quivering with the after-effects of rage, I apologised to Liz, who looked dewy-eyed and tearful. I mentally kicked myself for putting her through such an unpleasant experience.

'Liz, I'm really sorry. I should have seen the trouble before it happened. And I don't like to lose my temper in front of other people.'

She looked pale, which I put down to the unpleasant surprise of being molested by a drunken half-wit.

'You – you have a temper, don't you?'

'My mother's side of the family,' I explained. 'Dublin Irish. She had to look up to me from the age of twelve when I got told off by her, but I didn't dare answer her back. When I was sixteen I used the "F" word in front of her, and she walloped me with a skillet as a warning. My dad would make two of me, and he was afraid of her when she got into a temper.'

Liz half-laughed, half-sobbed at my blatantly diversionary tactics.

'I know what you're thinking, "How can anyone be twice as big as John?", well you never saw the Fijian player on our rugby team. He makes me look small and delicate. And then there's my uncle Derek, who is known in Wigan as "The Derrick" because he's as big as a crane, and used to throw an anvil for his New Year party trick. My dad, mind, Eric, was called "The Wreck" on the rugby field because when you hit him, you stopped dead.'

This time Liz's laughter was more laugh than cry.

'Stop, stop, stop! You aren't going to get into trouble for hitting that man, are you?'

'Man? Man? What man?' I retorted. 'It may be a bit provincial of me, but from where I come from, you don't hit women. Not to prejudice, but those two plonkers will have criminal histories, outstanding warrants and unpaid fines, I guarantee. They won't go to the police.'

'Was what you did "Lesson Two"?' she asked. Bright girl, Liz Munroe.

'Too right it was! If the one with the knife had bothered you, it would have been Lesson One.'

I told her about Marie and the skinheads in Trafalgar Square, with the correct amount of regret.

'Really, I'm not a violent killing-machine a la Charles Bronson or The Professionals. I have managed to keep my temper under control of late. The last time it went so badly was during Operation Chromium.'

That sparked a recollection on Liz's part.

'Oh, that was you and Ruth Kelly, wasn't it? When that gang caught her?'

Nick must have retailed that particular adventure.

'Our stop. Come on, don't miss the platform. Yes, it was. I – well, I also beat a man's face in with a spade. Hey – we're near the Natural History Museum, which is where Ruth works. Let's go catch a cup of tea with her!' A good idea of mine.

Ruth, small, dark, ebullient and fond of large men, fussed over Liz like a mother hen, sending me off to make tea in the department kitchen. She caught up with me a minute later, crossing her arms and looking distressingly like my mum in a bad mood.

'I know, I know, it's my fault. I should have foreseen trouble. Will Liz feel any better after a cup of Rosie Lee?'

Ruth poked me in the ribs with a pencil.

'_You're _the reason she's white and shakey, Mister Walmsley, not those drunken idiots!'

'Me?' I asked, surprised more than I could express.

'Yes, you great meaty pudding!' Poke-poke went the pencil. 'One minute you and she are whizzing about on the Tube, Liz gaping at the wonders of modern life with the urbane and affable Captain Walmsley, the next she's shoulder-to-shoulder with John the Raving Psycho.'

Oh. My temper again.

I delivered the cup of tea to Liz.

'Ahem. You are now face-to-face with John, not the raving monster who bashes peoples faces in with the nearest blunt instrument.'

Still a little shakey, Liz took the drink.

I tried a winning smile.

'Friends again?'

'John!' scolded Ruth again. 'Don't scare the poor girl with your patent rabid maniacal grimace.'

'It was a charming smile,' I riposted. 'Utterly charming.'

'For snakes, maybe,' said Ruth. 'People, real live human people, don't like a rictus like that.'

Liz grinned at me.

Nick, as you might imagine, was not happy that his younger sister had been subject to hideous nastiness in the capital city. In fact he went alternately white and purple when Liz told him the tale.

'Tark, get your temper under control. John here delivered divine justice.' She delivered a highly-coloured account of events. Having been told that the two assailants were now piles of human puree, Nick felt better, which he would have done pretty soon anyway, since Moyra was with us.

'The last time I pasted someone in public, the Army's CID sent a lawyer to nosey around,' I complained, gloomily. 'And the last time I did it in private, Sergeant Benton and I ended up getting a formal warning in Geneva.' I needn't have worried. Manny, the old man running the fruit stall at TCS station, replied "what fight?" when the British Transport Police asked him. He proudly told me this the next time we met.

'Oh, trouble with the authorities, hey?' said Moyra, sly and ironic considering her position.

Damn but that woman was attractive! Elizabeth Munroe did behave like a cat having her territory encroached upon when they met, all icy politeness and barely-restrained bitchiness.

We were assembled around the huge polished walnut dinner table, sharing a light supper of pate and toasted French batard, washed down with a bottle of Cabernet that Nick found in his wardrobe.

'How is Donal's wrist?' I asked Moyra.

'Oh, fine,' she replied, tossing her long auburn locks around. 'He heals quickly.'

Moyra and Donal, being of The People, were blessed with superhuman strength, and when Donal tried to choke Lieutenant Walmsley to death, why well the Lieutenant stabbed Donal through the wrist.

'What do we think of the saturnine Tad?' asked Nick, successfully changing the subject. 'Another glass, John?'

'No thanks. Marie is still insisting I cut down, and we got through quite enough last night. How I didn't have a hangover today I don't know. The saturnine Tad? Sharp-witted chap. The kind who sees all and says little.'

'He was busy taking notes when you and the SAS stormed the warehouse to release Lady Sarah from durance vile.'

I hadn't heard that. It seemed the kind of intelligent behaviour he'd display.

'I can see why they call the Poles "The French of Eastern Europe",' commented Liz. 'Romantic, passionate, all that.'

'Tush!' snorted her brother. 'Just because he kissed your hand.'

'Quite,' I said, drily. 'Tad's passion and romance is pretty well-hidden. After getting through what would have stocked a fair-sized drinks cabinet last night, he smiled a bit more than usual. "Usual" being not at all. Stoney-faced bugger.'

'I also think he got promoted temporarily, or only recently,' deduced Nick. 'A captain doesn't fall on foreign weapons with the glee of a small boy.'

'Absolutely correct, _Lieutenant_.'

'It's only a brevet rank. Temporary. When Tad vanishes, so does _Captain_ Walmsley,' said Nick in a stage-whisper to Moyra.

Moyra whispered back to Nick in a proper whisper.

'We're off to bed now. Goodnight!' he said, and as quickly as that the pair departed. Liz gave Moyra's back a good hard look.

'Gold-digger,' she muttered, then caught me looking at her. 'Probably after the family fortune.'

'Now now, cattiness does not become you, Liz. And she got on famously with Nick before knowing his financial status.'

'That's another thing,' mused Liz. 'How does my brother end up with a woman who looks like a Vogue cover model?'

'Because he has a practiced line in patter, looks well-fed, has all his own teeth and takes his dress uniforms to be individually tailored.'

She laughed properly, the first time since getting upset on the Tube.

'It's true, he confessed. An Italian chap here in the City, "Gentleman's Costumiers".'

There was a touch of vanity about young Nicholas. Still, he had the money to indulge it. Me, I have to look good in whatever UNIT issues me.

'He's jealous of you, John.'

'Ah, I can't help having been born handsome rather than rich.'

'Idiot!' she giggled. 'No, I mean he wants to win a medal or get promoted and you pip him to the post every time. Pater warned him – you need a medal or promotion or no position in the family firm when you become a civilian.'

'Did Nick explain to you or your dad what the Assault Platoon is?'

Liz shook her head. I put it briefly; Nick had impressed the visting panel from Geneva sufficiently with his planning of Operation Bannockburn to get put in charge of the Assault Platoon, the chaps who went to first contact. I didn't explain what a "first contact" was, nor the constitution of the force (three Fox armoured cars, a Scorpion light tank, a Bedford truck and three Landrovers).

'You tell your dad that if there is an al – er, a contact, that Nick will be first in.'

'You make it sound dangerous.'

'It is. No joking,' because it was and I wasn't.

Subdued, we tidied up the dishes and glasses, stacking them in the kitchen.

'The domestic is in at eleven tomorrow,' said Liz. 'She cleans up any dirty crocks.'

I went back into the lounge, where the embers were crackling and dying. I walked over to the big picture window and looked out across London in a reflective frame of mind. If I could tolerate tobacco, now would be a cigarette moment.

'City of light,' I mused aloud, recalling how dead and dark the same city had been when the Fantastic Vanishing Dinosaurs caused it's evacuation.

'That's a bit poetic,' said Liz quietly, standing behind me.

'Eh? Sorry, I do wax lyrical occasionally.' I gestured at the city beyond the window. 'Eight million people. Part of a national population of fifty-five million. And my job, responsibility, duty, whatever you call it, is to protect them from things they cannot be allowed to know about. At times it catches up with you.'

Liz didn't ask questions about what she shouldn't ask questions about. Being from an army family, she knew when not to ask questions, even if the one she did finally ask was a real show-stopper.

'Would I be allowed to join UNIT once I graduated?' she asked, making me nearly recoil in surprise.

'Would you – well, you're not in the armed forces, so – no, actually I think you'd get snapped up, thinking about it. Good-quality staff are always hard to find, and Harry Sullivan has been heard to make noises about going into research or private practice.'

'He's a doctor at Aylesbury?'

'Dead right. Looks and talks like a stuffed-shirt with an over-starched collar, but he knows his stuff.'

'Cool! Then I'd know all your terrible secrets!' enthused Liz, now sounding more like an eighteen-year old than a woman worrying at dark matters.

'Miss Munroe! I don't have any terrible secrets!'

'Oh, I didn't mean _yours_. But since you mentioned it, Nick does say you have a thing for clever women.'

A second's silence fell. Imagination and tongue do your stuff -

'That information is classified!'

'Hmm. I can't tell if you're blushing or it's the light from the fire. Doctor Kelly. Professor Valdupont. Professor Shaw.'

Loud cough from John. Well-informed young lady! Curse her brother's eyes and ears, in fact curse the whole of his frame.

'Oh, I quite approve,' said Liz airily, as if I'd asked her. 'Nick will chase anything nice in a skirt, no standards you know.'

'Certainly none about betraying the confidences of a comrade, from what I gather. Okay, enough for me, I'm bushed and off to bed.'

Next morning, after breakfast, Nick took me aside.

'The gel is making noises about joining UNIT!' he told me, pale with worry. 'If the Old Man finds out I'm for the high jump! He already sees her in a consultancy in Harley Street by the time she's my age.'

Maliciously, I egged the pudding.

'Yes, she mentioned something about it last night. I rather pooh-poohed it, she's not in the armed forces, as I pointed out.'

Like pushing a button, Nick's liverish condition instantly worsened.

'_What!_' he hissed. 'Good God, if she – she might apply for the RAMC!'

'Far be it from me to suggest it, and what's the problem with that? "Protect the Planet" and all.'

Nick seemed more worried about his hide than the fate of Earth, the selfish sod, imagining the fire and brimstone Munroe Senior would visit on his tender skin.

'Listen,' I consoled him. 'Liz has got at least five years before she graduates, by which time she will doubtless have changed her mind.'

'Oh how little you know her!' said Nick bitterly. 'Once she makes her mind up – the Old Man will blame me for setting her astray, you know. Every relative I've got from Whitehall to Windermere will have it in for me. I'll be banished abroad. Ascension or the Falklands.'

Suddenly, a look of considerable cunning spread over his face. Liz and Moyra were still clattering about in the kitchen.

'John,' began Nick, wearing an expression akin to that of a weasel stalking a bird. 'You're a permanent UNIT member, aren't you? I'll be back in the regulars by the time Liz graduates, but you won't be, will you?'

I let him carry on. This sounded interesting. Probably illegal, certainly immoral, but interesting.

'Yes,' continued Liz's treacherous brother, practically rubbing his hands with delight. 'When she applies, you can kill the application stone dead!' He hadn't finished yet. 'Plus, when you meet the Old Man, you can simultaneously impress him with how dangerous the Assault Platoon command is, how fantastically necessary UNIT are, and how innocent I am about Liz having bizarre ideas about joining them.'

I cocked my head to one side, letting him stew for a few seconds. Somehow the fact that I hadn't actually agreed to meet Munroe Senior passed my plotting comrade by.

'And I get thirty pieces of silver for this?'

Nick fumbled in his pocket, and for a minute I really did think he was going to offer me money – a big moral no-no. Instead he produced two keys.

'The spare keys to this apartment. Yours.'

Yes, I took them.

'Well, well, look who's grinning,' asked Liz, finished in the kitchen. 'Getting on famously, are we?' Moyra settled herself on a wing chair, arching an eyebrow at her paramour, then darting a quick glance at me.

'Indeed, Liz,' smarmed Nick. 'Hey, would you mind giving us a quick tune on the Steinway?'

'Really! Really? Okay, okay. A Chopin etude?' - and a chance to show off.

She twirled the piano stool, sat down, flipped a few pages and began to pound out a dismal percussive clanging. Awful. Well, no, probably fantastic, except to a tone-deaf philistine like me.

'I just thought John might like to hear the sound of some keys,' began Nick. He looked set to carry on in this vein, so I dug around in the classical section of his record collection and showed him a particular record, "The Cossack Sabre Dance" and pointed to Liz, which shut up his nasty noisy commentary.

'Below the belt, that,' he complained next day.

'You were getting complacently arrogant,' I replied.

'Power corrupting, I think.'

'I'm impressed with your sis, tho. Playing piano.'

'Ah now, she got the brains in the family. I got the looks.'

I whistled.

'So Don and Greg go around wearing paper bags over their heads?'

At which point Moyra came up and tutted at our banter.

'Don't start! Nick, we need to get going right away.'

'Mad about me. Can't bear not to have me to herself,' stage-whispered Nick, indicating Moyra with his thumb. 'Poor besotted gel.'

'Listen to Mister Whiskey talking about _sots_,' jibed Liz. 'My escort and I are off to the National History Museum today, and the Tate, and Buck House, so there.'

And we did, spending an entirely uneventful and very pleasant sunny day together, with me not falling for Liz and vice-versa.

Too, I found you can silence Nick by threatening to show his sister a record by Avram Chachaturian, especially when the composer's name is in capitals: AVRAM CHACHATURIAN, and the holder's sausage-like fingers cover up the AV and HACHATURIAN. Nick got it and I'll let you work it out.


End file.
